The more essential virtual collaboration becomes for a business, the more value and importance must be given to maintaining constant high quality

Why has video become a business-critical capability?

Executive Insight 06/2022, 5 min read

Video has become an eligible way of collaboration and a business-critical capability for any company. As the requirements for video collaboration quality are growing, businesses now need to invest in ease of use, compatibility and user experience, says Pasi Mäenpää, CEO, Elisa Videra. 

Pasi Mäenpää

Pasi Mäenpää

Chief Executive Officer at Elisa Videra and Executive Vice President, New Business Development, at Elisa Corporation

Pasi is the CEO of Elisa Videra and Executive Vice President, New Business Development, at Elisa Corporation. In his current role, he leads Elisa Videra’s global expansion in managed visual communications business. As a member of Elisa’s Executive Management Board, he participates in corporate strategy development, strategy execution follow-up and new business development initiatives.

Prior to his current role, Pasi worked as the General Manager for Cisco Systems in Finland and the Baltics, Regional General Manager for Netigy Corporation in Northern and Central Europe, Vice President of Sales for Fujitsu TeamWare Group in Europe and USA, and held various Director positions at Oracle Corporation in Finland, Austria, the Baltics, Switzerland, UK, and Eastern Europe.

Pasi holds a Datanomi diploma in Information Technology and Business Administration from Helia University of Applied Sciences and an MBA in International Business Management from Henley Management College, Brunel University London.

Video collaboration has become the norm and a fully eligible way to collaborate with stakeholders, customers and internally for all companies. This huge shift, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led businesses to prepare their offices and solutions for the hybrid working mode. With employees now returning to offices, we’ve come face-to-face with a fundamental change in working culture – and the new requirements for solutions supporting it. 

One key element of the change is that we've finally become accustomed to seeing ourselves on video. Where two years ago we saw only black screens, people are now acting naturally with their cameras on. The habit and continuous practice have led us not to think of the video as a camera filming us, but as a tool to collaborate and participate virtually.

Simultaneous with increased demand for video conferencing equipment that has during the past months skyrocketed, we’re facing a new geopolitical situation that causes challenges such as component shortages and logistical problems. 

How to equip your organisation for the new working culture

As we’ve all already become accustomed to Teams meetings, video readiness may seem like an achieved goal. But the more we collaborate through video, the more business-critical it becomes to secure a good quality video collaboration. 

In remote meetings during the pandemic, where everyone participated through their personal computers, a cloud-based Teams meeting was a good enough solution for the time being. But the more people participate in the video meetings from the office, the more complex the situation becomes. The Teams environment and the traditional video conferencing equipment in the meeting rooms simply don’t communicate together very well. 

As almost all meetings are now held in hybrid mode, the office space also faces a need to undergo a change. The need for meeting rooms equipped with video collaboration solutions has grown exponentially. 

Considering the new generation of video collaboration products, the quality of the collaboration is one of the key features: large screens display all remote participants in good size for the meeting room participants, and wide-angle cameras equipped with group framing and speaker tracking enable remote participants to follow the conversation held in the room. 

But how can businesses equip the workplace for the new working culture while utilising previous investments made in meeting room technologies? The key words are integration and Gateway solutions. 

Digitising the encounters

Communicating through video is one thing, maintaining fundamental business relations through virtual collaboration is another. The more essential this type of communication becomes for the business, the more value and importance must be given to maintaining the constant high quality of the connections, solutions and products that make the collaboration possible. 

And even though internal video meetings have become a regular fixture for most businesses, many are still struggling to set best practices for collaboration with external stakeholders. Remote work and video meetings are the mere tip of the iceberg when it comes to digitising all the different encounters of an organisation. 

As part of digitising their customer experience, many companies have started to build video enabled customer service, as the consumer customers have also grown to expect digital face-to-face collaboration and approve video delivered service even in their most private encounters, such as doctor’s appointments. 

As virtual collaboration to this extent is new for most of us, it may have gone unnoticed how much work a secure and always available video connection actually requires. The solutions are evolving so rapidly and taking such significant steps in terms of reliability, compatibility and security, that it takes effort even from the best in the field to keep up with the development of the industry – let alone IT departments from whom the business-critical nature of this capability often goes unnoticed.

Service is needed to maintain the quality of business-critical capabilities

During the past few months, we’ve established multiple Teams Rooms for our customers, making sure the new and the old investments in equipment are integrated and working seamlessly. Despite the shortage, we’ve managed to find, deliver and deploy products and solutions for our global customers, and make sure that their solutions meet the newly set quality standards and maximise the benefits of the investments.

Our remote service monitoring, the Hummingbird system, consolidates information from multiple systems, including the quality of internet connections and usage of the premises, and provides simple views that deliver insights to all users regardless of technical understanding. This allows us to fix issues remotely before they become a problem.

With years of experience in the field, we’ve enabled our customers to make the most of their virtual communications solutions with our professional and managed services, making sure no issues in the platforms or connections can harm their virtual collaboration. Our work has paid off when the tools of collaboration are never out of use and no one seemingly needs us. 

Now that video has become a culturally accepted and accustomed way to work, collaborate and sell and offer services, it is time to invest in its ease of use, compatibility and user experience. COVID has taught us well.  

Key points:

  • Video collaboration has become the norm and a fully eligible way to collaborate with stakeholders, customers and internally for all companies, leading businesses to prepare their offices and solutions for the hybrid working mode. A key element of the change is that we've finally become accustomed to seeing ourselves on video.
  • As almost all meetings are now held in hybrid mode, the need for meeting rooms equipped with video collaboration solutions has grown exponentially. The quality of the collaboration is the key feature of the new generation of video collaboration products.
  • Simultaneous with the increased demand for video conferencing equipment, we’re facing a new geopolitical situation that causes challenges such as component shortages and logistical problems.
  • The more essential virtual collaboration becomes for a business, the more value and importance must be given to maintaining the constant high quality of the connections, solutions and products that make the collaboration possible. Now is time to invest in its ease of use, compatibility and user experience.

Make the most of your virtual communications solutions.

  • Customer engagement solutions

    Provide an engaging and more personal digital customer experience for your customers, clients and patients. Elisa Videra Customer Engagement Solutions create trust and comfort for decision-making with face-to-face service and improved service reachability.

  • Global Managed​ Services & Monitoring 

    Ensure video conference solutions availability and call quality and get peace of mind with our Managed Services; management of your hybrid work environments, emerging issues automatically fixed before they become problems and effortless monitoring.

  • Interoperability & Gateway Solutions

    Enable your video meeting solutions to work seamlessly with one-click. Elisa Videra provides video interoperability solutions connecting modern meeting devices and traditional video conferencing devices to one workflow.

  • Enhanced professional services


    Get the resources to design and implement your communication solutions smoothly and efficiently. Our experts are at your service from solution planning and design to security assessment & optimization and architecture design.

Any cloud, any device – we make it work

Provide your people with freedom of choice wherever they meet and work. Elisa Videra designs, integrates, delivers and manages interoperable technology solutions for large international enterprises, with a can-do attitude. We understand the complexities of moving towards Hybrid Work and we build a credible roadmap to hybrid work based on your business needs.

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